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A sea of tears: the flooded people of South Bangladesh

Now, through disasters both man-made and natural, water is wreaking a new kind of havoc. Due to rising sea levels in the Bay of Bengal, and because the government has encouraged the unchecked growth of shrimp farms, the villages scattered along the south-western coast are being flooded with salt water. Large tracts of land, previously green with paddy, are now hot and stagnant pools, hospitable only to the cultivation of shrimp. The shrimp farms are lucrative, but they employ fewer people than the rice farms they have supplanted, leaving many households without an income. The briny water also has ruinous effects on the ecosystem. Nothing grows in these districts any more: the fish have died, along with the birds that depended on them. The cows have nothing to eat, so there is no milk; the tigers are fleeing inland and attacking humans. Worst of all, there is no fresh water to drink.

Munem Wasif’s photographs capture the desperate search for drinking water that has become a daily struggle for the villagers of southern Bangladesh. Their wells and fresh water sources contaminated, they spend the better part of their days in the search for water. Women make the long trek to the nearest source, kolshi flasks heavy on their hips. Children are taken out of school to help with water collection. Some villagers have taken collective action: every day, they lead small boats through the forest, gathering water and supplying their entire village. Others have no recourse but to pray – to the skies, to God, to Bon-Bibi – for the sweet, life-giving water that once coursed abundantly through this land.

New York carbon clock tracks rising greenhouse emissions

Secondly because, as two recent papers in Nature show, cumulative emissions are the most important measure of whether or not we’re winning. One of them suggests that only 1500-1800bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (or 400-500bn tonnes of carbon) stand between current temperatures and two degrees of global warming. The other gives us a 25% chance of exceeding two degrees if we produce 1000bn tonnes of CO2.

The carbon clock suggests that the cumulative total of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere so far is 3.64tn metric tonnes, carbon dioxide equivalent. It is rising by 2bn tonnes a month. To have a good chance of stopping at the all-important temperature barrier, we need to produce, across the remainder of human history, not much more than a quarter of the total accumulation so far. In other words, no more than 500 months (42 years) of current production. The clock must stop at 4.6tn. There’s our challenge in stark numbers. Sobering to have it spelt out.

The New York carbon counter will be updated online at know-the-number.com.

monbiot.com

Denmark to power electric cars by wind in vehicle-to-grid experiment

The concept, known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is widely cited among greens as a key step towards a low-carbon future, but has never been demonstrated. Now, the 40,000 inhabitants of Bornholm are being recruited into the experiment. Denmark is already a world leader in wind energy and has schemes to replace 10% of all its vehicles with electric cars, but the goal on the island is to replace all petrol cars.

Currently 20% of the island’s electricity comes from wind, even though it has enough turbines installed to meet 40% of its needs. The reason it cannot use the entire capacity is the intermittency of the wind: many turbines are needed to harness sufficient power in breezes, but when gales blow the grid would overload, so some turbines are disconnected.

So the aim of the awkwardly named Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks Project – Edison for short – is to use V2G to allow more turbines to be built and provide up to 50% of the island’s supply without making the grid crash.

Each electric vehicle will have battery capacity reserved to store wind power for the island rather than for travelling. This means it acts like a buffer, says Dieter Gantenbein, a researcher at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory. IBM is developing the software needed for the island’s smart grid, and will showcase its work next week. When the cars are plugged in and charging their batteries, they will absorb any additional load the grid cannot cope with and then feed it back to power homes when needed, he says.

“It’s never been tried at this scale,” says Hermione Crease of Cambridge-based Sentec, which develops smart grid software. There are plenty of smart grid trials already under way, usually involving the use of software to monitor and manage supply and demand, for example, by temporarily switching off industrial cooling units during periods of peak load, she says. But unlike these so-called “negawatt” approaches, proving that cars can be used as part of the grid has yet to attempted.

Andrew Howe of RLTec in London, another smart grid technology firm, says many important questions need answers. It is not clear, for example, how the cost and lifetime of batteries will influence the economics of such a system.

These are the kinds of issue the project seeks to shed light on, says the project manager Jørgen Christensen of the Danish Energy Association, which with technology companies Siemens and Dong and the government are running the scheme.

Government trips over own policy

The two major climate policies – the RET and Emissions Trading Scheme (EST) – are both likely to be held up in the Senate.

And it’s a problem for households who want to go solar.

The government last week axed its $8,000 rebate for solar panels. A new, smaller rebate will not start until the RET laws have passed parliament.

The government had planned for that to happen next week, but the coalition, Family First senator Steve Fielding and independent Nick Xenophon scotched that plan in the Senate.

Matthew Warren, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, warned that hundreds of workers could be immediately laid off as a result.

“Clean energy companies around Australia will now put hiring plans on hold and in some cases be forced to start shedding staff,” he said.

Mr Warren said the RET laws should have been passed a year ago.

The government promised the RET – 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020 – before the last election.

But the laws were only tabled in parliament on Wednesday.

And the government has linked the RET to the already embattled ETS.

Adding to the controversy is the fact that the government changed the solar rebate twice in a year before axing it, only to replace it with a third rebate.

Senator Wong attacked the coalition for delaying action on global warming. She defended the decision to end the old rebate.

“It was the fiscally responsible thing to do,” Senator Wong said.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said it was the government’s fault the RET laws were not ready.

“This legislation is a year late,” he said.

The vote has been delayed so a Senate committee can hold an inquiry into the laws by August 12. Mr Hunt said scrutiny was needed.

Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne said there was no excuse for another delay in the RET.

Compounding the climate headache for the government is the prospect of a lengthy debate on emissions trading next week.

There is speculation the coalition will stretch out the debate late into the night to avoid a vote.

Parliament breaks for winter at the end of next week.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said filibustering on the debate was not leadership, it was opportunism.

“Not having the courage to vote for climate change is one thing, not having the courage to allow any vote on climate change, that’s something else.”

Trend towards El Niño strengthens

From The Land

The signs of a developing El Niño have strengthened during the past fortnight, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

It says the key indicators for this forecast are a drop in the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to around -10, further warming of the Pacific and a strong decrease in the strength of the Trade Winds.

And the Bureau says many computer models remain firm in their predictions of an El Niño event in 2009.

This puts the odds of an El Niño at above 50 per cent, which is more than double the normal risk of an event.

However, the Bureau says it is still possible, though increasingly less likely, that the recent trends may stall without El Niño thresholds being reached.

El Niño events are usually (but not always) associated with below normal rainfall in the second half of the year across large parts of southern and inland eastern Australia.

Another adverse sign for southeastern Australian rainfall is the recent trend to positive values in the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), as measured by the Dipole Mode Index (DMI).

Murray beyond saving says Young

From the ABC

A water scientist has told a parliamentary committee in South Australia that parts of the Murray-Darling should be allowed to die to save other parts of the river system.

Professor Mike Young says the best way forward would be to have water flows for the environment controlled by a trust rather than the government.

He says if it does not rain, parts of the river in South Australia which are dying should be let go to ensure the survival of other parts, although he says it would be a horrible decision.

“It’s not to me about just closing off part of the lower lakes,” he said.

“It’s about looking at every backwater, every wetland, every forest throughout the system from top to bottom and having a very careful discussion about which bits we invest in keeping going and which bits we are prepared to let go if it doesn’t rain.”

Professor Young says, if a temporary weir is built at Wellington on the lower Murray to help safeguard water needs for Adelaide, it may not be able to be removed within three years as planned.

He says a flood the size of one in 1956 would be needed to flush the system, fill up the lower lakes and enable the weir’s removal.

“The environmental impact statements that are being prepared at the moment all assume that this problem is going to be solved in three years’ time because there’ll be enough water in the system to enable us to remove the weir,” he said.

“If we remain in the dry regime, and we’ve just had forecasts for another dry winter, I can’t see how we can get the water back in the system in sufficient volumes that we could take out the weir.”